by Ellen Wood
“Of course, she can’t spare time to drink tea while he is there,” cried Charlotte, resentfully, who had watched what passed. “That man has bewitched her, Dan.”
“Not quite yet, I think,” said Dan, quietly. “He is trying to do it. There is no love lost between you and him, I see, Lotty.”
“Not a ghost of it,” nodded Lotty. “The town may be going wild in its admiration of him, but I am not; and the sooner he betakes himself back to India to his regiment, the better.”
“I hope he will not take Mina with him,” said Dan, gravely.
“I hope not, either. But she is silly enough for anything.”
“Who is that, that’s silly enough for anything?” cried Madame St. Vincent, whisking back to her place.
“Mina,” promptly replied Charlotte. “She asked for a cup of tea, and then said she did not want it.”
Some of the people sat down to cards; some to music; some talked. It was the usual routine at these soirées, Mrs. Knox condescended to inform me — and, what more, she added, could be wished for? Conversation, music, and cards — they were the three best diversions of life, she said, not that she herself much cared for music.
Poor Lady Jenkins did not join actively in any one of the three: she for the most part dozed in her chair. When any one spoke to her, she would wake up and say Yes or No; but that was all. Captain Collinson stood in a corner, talking to Mina behind a sheet of music. He appeared to be going over the bars with her, and to be as long doing it as if a whole opera were scored there.
At nine o’clock the supper-room was thrown open, and Captain Collinson handed in Lady Jenkins. Heavy suppers were not the mode at Lefford; neither, as a rule, did the guests sit down, except a few of the elder ones; but the table was covered with dainties. Sandwiches, meats in jelly, rissoles, lobster salad, and similar things that could be eaten with a fork, were supplied in abundance, with sweets and jellies.
“I hope you’ll be able to make a supper, my dear,” said Lady Jenkins to me in her comfortable way — for supper seemed to wake her up. “You see, if one person began to give a grand sitting-down supper, others would think themselves obliged to do it, and every one can’t afford that. So we all confine ourselves to this.”
“And I like this best,” I said.
“Do you, my dear? I’m glad of that. Dan, is that you? Mind you make a good supper too.”
We both made a famous one. At least, I can answer for myself. And, at half-past ten, Dan and I departed together.
“How very good-natured Lady Jenkins seems to be!” I remarked.
“She is good-nature itself, and always was,” Dan warmly answered. “She has never been a bit different from what you see her to-night — kind to us all. You should have known her though in her best days, before she grew ill. I never saw any one so altered.”
“What is it that’s the matter with her?”
“I don’t know,” answered Dan. “I wish I did know. Sam tells me Tamlyn does not know. I’m afraid he thinks it is the break-up of old age. I should be glad, though, if she did not patronize that fellow Collinson so much.”
“Every one seems to patronize him.”
“Or to let him patronize them,” corrected Dan. “I can’t like the fellow. He takes too much upon himself.”
“He seems popular. Quite the fashion.”
“Yes, he is that. Since he came here, three or four months ago, the women have been running after him. Do you like him, Johnny Ludlow?” abruptly added Dan.
“I hardly know whether I do or not: I’ve not seen much of him,” was my answer. “As a rule, I don’t care for those people who take much upon themselves. The truth is, Dan,” I laughed jokingly, “you think Collinson shows too much attention to Mina Knox.”
Dan walked on for a few moments in silence. “I am not much afraid of that,” he presently said. “It is the fellow himself I don’t like.”
“And you do like Mina?”
“Well — yes; I do. If Mina and I were older and my means justified it, I would make her my wife to-morrow — I don’t mind telling you so much. And if the man is after her, it is for the sake of her money, mind, not for herself. I’m sure of it. I can see.”
“I thought Collinson had plenty of money of his own.”
“So he has, I believe. But money never comes amiss to an extravagant and idle man; and I think that Mina’s money makes her attraction in Collinson’s eyes. I wish with all my heart she had never had it left her!” continued Dan, energetically. “What did Mina want with seven thousand pounds?”
“I dare say you would not object to it, with herself.”
“I’d as soon not have it. I hope I shall make my way in my profession, and make it well, and I would as soon take Mina without money as with it. I’m sure her mother might have it and welcome, for me! She is always hankering after it.”
“How do you know she is?”
“We do her business at old Belford’s, and she gets talking about the money to him, making no scruple of openly wishing it was hers. She bothers Dr. Knox, who is Mina’s trustee, to lend her some of it. As if Knox would! — she might just as well go and bother the moon. No! But for that confounded seven thousand pounds Collinson would let Mina alone.”
I shook my head. He could not know it. Mina was very pretty. Dan saw my incredulity.
“I will tell you why I judge so,” he resumed, dropping his voice to a lower key. “Unless I am very much mistaken, Collinson likes some one else — and that’s Madame St. Vincent. Sam thinks so too.”
It was more than I thought. They were cool to one another.
“But we have seen them when no one else was by,” contended Dan: “when he and she were talking together alone. And I can tell you that there was an expression on his face, an anxiousness, an eagerness — I hardly know how to word it — that it never wore for Mina. Collinson’s love is given to madame. Rely upon that.”
“Then why should he not declare it?”
“Ah, I don’t know. There may be various reasons. Her poverty perhaps — for she has nothing but the salary Lady Jenkins pays her. Or, he may not care to marry one who is only a companion: they say he is of good family himself. Another reason, and possibly the most weighty one, may be, that madame does not like him.”
“I don’t think she does like him.”
“I am sure she does not. She gives him angry looks, and she turns away from him with ill-disguised coldness. And so, that’s about how the state of affairs lies up there,” concluded Dan, shaking hands with me as we reached the door of his lodgings. “Captain Collinson’s love is given to Madame St. Vincent, on the one hand, and to Mina’s money on the other; and I think he is in a pretty puzzle which of the two to choose. Good-night, Johnny Ludlow. Be sure to remember this is only between ourselves.”
II.
A week or so passed on. Janet was up to her eyes in preparations, expecting a visitor. And the visitor was no other than Miss Cattledon — if you have not forgotten her. Being fearfully particular in all ways, and given to fault-finding, as poor Janet only too well remembered, of course it was necessary to have things in apple-pie order.
“I should never hear the last of it as long as Aunt Jemima stayed, if so much as a speck of dust was in any of the rooms, or a chair out of place,” said Janet to me laughingly, as she and the maids dusted and scrubbed away.
“What’s she coming for, Janet?”
“She invited herself,” replied Janet: “and indeed we shall be glad to see her. Miss Deveen is going to visit some friends in Devonshire, and Aunt Jemima takes the opportunity of coming here the while. I am sorry Arnold is so busy just now. He will not have much time to give to her — and she likes attention.”
The cause of Dr. Knox’s increased occupation, was Mr. Tamlyn’s illness. For the past few days he had had feverish symptoms, and did not go out. Few medical men would have found the indisposition sufficiently grave to remain at home; but Mr. Tamlyn was an exception. He gave in at the least thing now: an
d it was nothing at all unusual for Arnold Knox to find all the patients thrown on his own hands.
Amongst the patients so thrown this time was Lady Jenkins. She had caught cold at that soirée I have just told of. Going to the door in her old-fashioned, hospitable way, to speed the departure of the last guests, she had stayed there in the draught, talking, and began at once to sneeze and cough.
“There!” cried Madame St. Vincent, when my lady got back again, “you have gone and caught a chill.”
“I think I have,” admitted Lady Jenkins. “I’ll send for Tamlyn in the morning.”
“Oh, my dear Lady Jenkins, we shall not want Tamlyn,” dissented madame. “I’ll take care of you myself, and have you well in no time.”
But Lady Jenkins, though very much swayed by her kind companion, who was ever anxious for her, chose to have up Mr. Tamlyn, and sent him a private message herself.
He went up at once — evidently taking madame by surprise — and saw his patient. The cold, being promptly treated, turned out to be a mere nothing, though Madame St. Vincent insisted on keeping the sufferer some days in bed. By the time Mr. Tamlyn was ill, she was well again, and there was not much necessity for Dr. Knox to take her: at least, on the score of her cold. But he did it.
One afternoon, when he was going up there late, he asked me if I would like the drive. And, while he paid his visit to Lady Jenkins, I went in to Rose Villa. It was a fine, warm afternoon, almost like summer, and Mrs. Knox and the girls were sitting in the garden. Dicky was there also. Dicky was generally at school from eight o’clock till six, but this was a half-holiday. Dicky, eleven years old now, but very little for his age, was more troublesome than ever. Just now he was at open war with his two younger sisters and Miss Mack, the governess, who had gone indoors to escape him.
Leaning against the trunk of a tree, as he talked to Mrs. Knox, Mina, and Charlotte, stood Captain Collinson, the rays of the sun, now drawing westward, shining full upon him, bringing out the purple gloss of his hair, whiskers, beard, and moustache deeper than usual. Captain Collinson incautiously made much of Dicky, had told him attractive stories of the glories of war, and promised him a commission when he should be old enough. The result was, that Dicky had been living in the seventh heaven, had bought himself a tin sword, and wore it strapped to his waist, dangling beneath his jacket. Dicky, wild to be a soldier, worshipped Captain Collinson as the prince of heroes, and followed him about like a shadow. An inkling of this ambition of Dicky’s, and of Captain Collinson’s promise, had only reached Mrs. Knox’s ears this very afternoon. It was a ridiculous promise of course, worth nothing, but Mrs. Knox took it up seriously.
“A commission for Dicky! — get Dicky a commission!” she exclaimed in a flutter that set her bracelets jangling, just as I arrived on the scene. “Why, what can you mean, Captain Collinson? Do you think I would have Dicky made into a soldier — to be shot at? Never. He is my only son. How can you put such ideas into his head?”
“Don’t mind her,” cried Dicky, shaking the captain’s coat-tails. “I say, captain, don’t you mind her.”
Captain Collinson turned to young Dicky, and gave him a reassuring wink. Upon which, Dicky went strutting over the grass-plat, brandishing his sword. I shook hands with Mrs. Knox and the girls, and, turning to salute the captain, found him gone.
“You have frightened him away, Johnny Ludlow,” cried Charlotte: but she spoke in jest.
“He was already going,” said Mina. “He told me he had an engagement.”
“And a good thing too,” spoke Mrs. Knox, crossly. “Fancy his giving dangerous notions to Dicky!”
Dicky had just discovered our loss. He came shrieking back to know where the captain was. Gone away for good, his mother told him. Upon which young Dicky plunged into a fit of passion and kicking.
“Do you know how Lady Jenkins is to-day?” I asked of Charlotte, when Dicky’s noise had been appeased by a promise of cold apple-pudding for tea.
“Not so well.”
“Not so well! I had thought of her as being much better.”
“I don’t think her so,” continued Charlotte. “Madame St. Vincent told Mina this morning that she was all right; but when I went in just now she was in bed and could hardly answer me.”
“Is her cold worse?”
“No; I think that is gone, or nearly so. She seemed dazed — stupid, more so than usual.”
“I certainly never saw any one alter so greatly as Lady Jenkins has altered in the last few months,” spoke Mrs. Knox. “She is not like the same woman.”
“I’m sure I wish we had never gone that French journey!” said Mina. “She has never been well since. Oh, here’s Arnold!”
Dr. Knox had come straight into the garden from Jenkins House. Dicky rushed up to besiege his arms and legs; but, as Dicky was in a state of flour — which he had just put upon himself in the kitchen, or had had put upon him by the maids — the doctor ordered him to keep at arm’s-length; and the doctor was the only person who could make himself obeyed by Dicky.
“You have been to see Lady Jenkins, Arnold,” said his step-mother. “How is she?”
“Nothing much to boast of,” lightly answered Dr. Knox. “Johnny, are you ready?”
“I am going to be a soldier, Arnold,” put in Dicky, dancing a kind of war-dance round him. “Captain Collinson is going to make me a captain like himself.”
“All right,” said Arnold. “You must grow a little bigger first.”
“And, Arnold, the captain says —— Oh, my!” broke off Dicky, “what’s this? What have I found?”
The boy stooped to pick up something glittering that had caught his eye. It proved to be a curiously-shaped gold watch-key, with a small compass in it. Mina and Lotty both called out that it was Captain Collinson’s, and must have dropped from his chain during a recent romp with Dicky.
“I’ll take it in to him at Lady Jenkins’s,” said Dicky.
“You will do nothing of the sort, sir,” corrected his mother, taking the key from him: she had been thoroughly put out by the suggestion of the “commission.”
“Should you chance to see the captain when you go out,” she added to me, “tell him his watch-key is here.”
The phaeton waited outside. It was the oldest thing I ever saw in regard to fashion, and might have been in the firm hundreds of years. Its hood could be screwed up and down at will; just as the perch behind, where Thomas, the groom, generally sat, could be closed or opened. I asked Dr. Knox whether it had been built later than the year One.
“Just a little, I suppose,” he answered, smiling. “This vehicle was Dockett’s special aversion. He christened it the ‘conveyance,’ and we have mostly called it so since.”
We were about to step into it, when Madame St. Vincent came tripping out of the gate up above. Dr. Knox met her.
“I was sorry not to have been in the way when you left, doctor,” she said to him in a tone of apology: “I had gone to get the jelly for Lady Jenkins. Do tell me what you think of her?”
“She does not appear very lively,” he answered; “but I can’t find out that she is in any pain.”
“I wish she would get better! — she does give me so much concern,” warmly spoke madame. “Not that I think her seriously ill, myself. I’m sure I do everything for her that I possibly can.”
“Yes, yes, my dear lady, you cannot do more than you do,” replied Arnold. “I will be up in better time to-morrow.”
“Is Captain Collinson here?” I stayed behind Dr. Knox to ask.
“Captain Collinson here!” returned Madame St. Vincent, tartly, as if the question offended her. “No, he is not. What should bring Captain Collinson here?”
“I thought he might have called in upon leaving Mrs. Knox’s. I only wished to tell him that he dropped his watch-key next door. It was found on the grass.”
“I don’t know anything of his movements,” coldly remarked madame. And as I ran back to Dr. Knox, I remembered what Dan Jenkins had said — th
at she did not like the captain. And I felt Dan was right.
Dr. Knox drove home in silence, I sitting beside him, and Thomas in the perch. He looked very grave, like a man preoccupied. In passing the railway-station, I made some remark about Miss Cattledon, who was coming by the train then on its way; but he did not appear to hear me.
Sam Jenkins ran out as we drew up at Mr. Tamlyn’s gate. An urgent message had come for Dr. Knox: some one taken ill at Cooper’s — at the other end of the town.
“Mr. Tamlyn thinks you had better go straight on there at once, sir,” said Sam.
“I suppose I must,” replied the doctor. “It is awkward, though” — pulling out his watch. “Miss Cattledon will be due presently and Janet wanted me to meet her,” he added to me. “Would you do it, Johnny?”
“What — meet Miss Cattledon? Oh yes, certainly.”
The conveyance drove on, with the doctor and Thomas. I went indoors with Sam. Janet said I could meet her aunt just as well as Arnold, as I knew her. The brougham was brought round to the gate by the coachman, Wall, and I went away in it.
Smoothly and quietly glided in the train, and out of a first-class carriage stepped Miss Cattledon, thin and prim and upright as ever.
“Dear me! is that you, Johnny Ludlow?” was her greeting to me when I stepped up and spoke to her; and her tone was all vinegar. “What do you do here?”
“I came to meet you. Did you not know I was staying at Lefford?”
“I knew that. But why should they send you to meet me?”
“Dr. Knox was coming himself, but he has just been called out to a patient. How much luggage have you, Miss Cattledon?”
“Never you mind how much, Johnny Ludlow: my luggage does not concern you.”
“But cannot I save you the trouble of looking after it? If you will get into the brougham, I will see to the luggage and bring it on in a fly, if it’s too much to go on the box with Wall.”
“You mean well, Johnny Ludlow, I dare say; but I always see to my luggage myself. I should have lost it times and again, if I did not.”
She went pushing about amongst the porters and the trucks, and secured the luggage. One not very large black box went up by Wall; a smaller inside with us. So we drove out of the station in state, luggage and all, Cattledon holding her head bolt upright.
